Not even being shoved out on to No2 Court, the graveyard of champions, could halt the march of the Williams sisters yesterday. If anything, it served as motivation. “Initially I thought, 'Is this the right schedule?' I thought maybe there was a mistake,” Serena said of discovering that herself and Venus had been left off the show courts, or “dissed”, to use the language of their home town, Los Angeles.

No offence intended, the All England Club claimed. Simply a matter of squeezing lots of games into a busy Monday. The sisters were not buying it. “I haven't seen Roger Federer on No2 Court in, like, six years,” Serena said. “I think it is weird, especially having a female champ [in Venus] who has won this tournament four times.” There had evidently been a lot of disgruntled chuntering when the sisters travelled in yesterday.

If they believed that it was a matter of gender - and they preferred to leave their conspiracy theories unspoken - some empty seats when Venus began proceedings yesterday did not do much for her argument that the women bring as much to the table as the men. And while there is no doubting the individual appeal of both players, there may be groans among the hierarchy now that the sisters appear to be on collision course for the final on Saturday.

It is five years since the most recent of their six confrontations in grand-slam finals (five won by Serena) and few are itching for a return to those years of sibling rivalry. None of the scurrilous rumours about the games being decided over pre-match breakfast by Richard, their father, have been backed up by a shred of evidence, but the abiding memory is that competing sisters, particularly ones as close as these two, do not make for epic confrontations.

Expectations of a revival of that rivalry were only partly based on the evidence of No2 Court, where both sisters claimed two-set victories, Venus 6-3, 6-4 over Alisa Kleybanova, the Russian teenager, who put up a fight only when it was far too late, and Serena 6-3, 6-3 against Bethanie Mattek, of the United States.

As is her wont, Venus has been using the opening rounds to find her range and with Kleybanova struggling to land a first serve in the London Borough of Merton, she had only to raise her game to see off the Russian's late rally. Through with her work in little more than an hour, Serena had an even more comfortable victory and has yet to face a sufficiently tough challenge for anyone to be certain that she has brought her “A” game.

Venus faces the unseeded Tamarine Tanasugarn, of Thailand, in the quarter-finals, while Serena must overcome Agnieszka Radwanska, the No14 seed from Poland, which is all the more reason to believe that we are heading towards an all-Williams final, although it is the collapse of the top seeds that has provided the strongest evidence that the women's championship is, appropriately enough, being served up to one or other of them on a silver plate.

There was a scramble for the record books when the injured Jelena Jankovic lost to Tanasugarn and joined Ana Ivanovic and Maria Sharapova on the plane home, making it the first time since records began that the top three seeds have failed to reach the quarter-finals of a grand-slam tournament.

Jankovic did not depart without adding her complaints about the schedule, both on behalf of herself, who was stuck out on No18 Court, and for Venus. “It was not right,” she said. “I don't know what they are doing to put Venus on No2 and I'm on 18. I was almost playing in the parking lot. I almost needed a helicopter.”

The good news is that the Williams sisters are back on the show courts today, with Serena on Centre and Venus on No1. The bad news is that they will have to find something else to get them fired up over breakfast. Whether playing each other can get them truly motivated is the question we may be asking by Saturday morning. As the sun dipped over SW19 yesterday, they were team-mates heading to victory in the women's doubles - on No2 Court, which goes without saying.